book talk vol. eight

more books that I have read and think you should too

I’ve been reading a lot of classics and re-reading some faves lately but I have rustled up another issue of booktalk for you with some exceptionally good titles you might not have come across yet, so let’s go.

An Isis recruit, an adolescent beauty queen, and a childless millennial walk into a bar. A Biblical plague rains down head lice, aerial drone strikes, gender non-conforming frogs. An app throws a slumber party for a friendless office worker. An unhinged jet stream that is ultramodern and poignantly timeless, capturing the angst of the post-millennial generation.

Earth Angel by Madeline Cash occupies the same kind of territory as Jennifer Egan for me. Her stories are explosively modern and cool and weird and inventive but also, just below the surface, lurks a deep and profound sadness. Reading Earth Angel is like peering into a future we can all see on the horizon but still hope is a mirage. It’s a sharp and often hilarious satire of life under late stage capitalism shot through a lens of nihilism and attention deficit disorder. There’s nothing else like this out there right now, a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the short story medium.

draws together the familiar tropes of the Gothic novel to produce a darkly funny and playful subversion of the form.

The Possessed by Witold Gombrowicz is genuinely one of the best books I’ve read in years and I’m so glad Fitzcarraldo are releasing it as part of their new classics series. It’s like if Burn After Reading was a gothic haunted house novel; a farce powered by obsession, greed, and fear it is as hilarious as it is unsettling.

It’s 1994, and Jesse Greer’s troubled older sister, Crys, has run away from home. Shy, socially awkward Jesse assumes that she has returned to her old haunts in the big city — until he discovers Crys’ remains in the woods behind his family’s house. Traumatised, Jesse runs to his parents for help, only to find that Crys has returned home, alive.

The False Sister is a dark, queer modern folk fable about the violence perpetrated against those who are perceived as different. With great clarity and precision Ripley summons the quiet horror of small town adolescence, and the fear we feel growing up not fully understanding ourselves, or the world around us. It is eerie and discomforting but ultimately incredibly powerful.

Shooting Star by Paul Rees is a genuinely illuminating and balanced portrait of Elliott Smith through the eyes of the people who knew and loved him. As someone who has been obsessed with Smith or most of his life, reading any fragment about him I could find, I was delighted to gain new perspective on him in these pages. It is so easy for people as beloved and tragic as Smith is to become almost mythic, their stories untouchable, but Rees here shows that yes, Elliott was a genius, a phenomenally gifted artist beleaguered with trauma and pain, but he was also just a person, a person who touched many lives both in good and awfully bad ways. Long time fans and newcomers alike with get a lot from this book.

That’s all for this one. Happy reading.

—NUCOSI